


Won from the void and formless infinite

by palavapeite



Category: Taboo (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:08:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21781963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palavapeite/pseuds/palavapeite
Summary: Nootka is the end. Except it isn't.(Essentially, Godfrey and Cholmondeley reluctantly co-parenting Robert on Nootka, while not growing on each other. At all.)
Relationships: George Cholmondeley/Michael Godfrey
Comments: 11
Kudos: 16





	Won from the void and formless infinite

**Author's Note:**

> I am aware that Godfrey's character can be interpreted in various ways regarding their gender identity and sexual orientation, since the show does not really care to explore either. For this fic idea, I eventually opted for the interpretation of Godfrey as a trans woman rather than a crossdressing gay man.
> 
> Thanks to [nerakrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerakrose) for the beta. All remaining mistakes are mine.

Nootka is the end. 

She’ll realise later that it isn’t, not yet, but for now it all ends in this godforsaken place, with a house that stands abandoned by everyone who ever thought to live in it. She falls asleep there, and when she wakes up again, half the company is gone, and so is the ship, and she doesn’t know if they have disappeared, or if she has. 

Delaney comes back with a cart of supplies, necessities and trinkets, as though he bought the contents of a market hall wholesale and considers his part done. 

They make repairs where necessary before the autumn can catch up with them, and Godfrey ruins her dress and stays helping Atticus and the men with the rough of it because Pearl’s pregnant and Miss Bow is too short to reach, and there is too much to do. 

Incongruous objects of decoration are placed throughout the house like grave goods, and they start stocking the kitchen and pantry for their afterlife. Cholmondeley takes all of the books and nobody stops him, but there is a fight over the cookware that Miss Bow wins. They have no use for the paintings, so they end up in a corner of the attic, and by the time they get to the bags of old clothes cast into a corner of the shed, the fabrics smell of mold and manure, and a set of bed curtains has become home to a family of mice.

Unbuttoning her gown at night, Godfrey beholds the damage to her stays and cries and cries, and misses London, and how everything at least had its place there. Even the small, airless corner of shame she used to exist in seems like a comfort compared to Nootka, where everything is coming apart and she is ever losing shape and definition.

In a corner of her room, her ratty wig sits, sad and torn, a travesty, just like her.

***

“You have everything you need here,” is Delaney’s reasoning for taking the horse and cart and men and disappearing again, but Miss Bow—she never insists on Mrs Delaney anymore—has blocked the door. 

“You can’t leave us here like dogs as you please!” She is well upset with him, and Godfrey is biting her tongue, arms crossed over her chest, as she stands silent witness, like a ghost, or scarecrow. Even without functioning stays she wears her black dress, patched to the best of her ability; she hasn’t let go of it through any of what came after they fled London, and she won’t now. Because if not this, what was it all for? 

“Do you think I’m going to a dance hall, Miss Bow?” 

Of course not, but this conversation has been much too overdue to stop her now. 

“What about Robert?” Godfrey throws in, and Delaney musters her, her attire, for a long, excruciating moment. He’s never remarked upon it, and thus, no-one else has, either, but it’s still shoddy armour that won’t hold up in a fight, especially not with him. 

“What about him?” 

“Well, what’s to become of him here?” Miss Bow, it seems, is on Godfrey’s side. She’s felt sorry for Robert ever since he appeared on her doorstep. “Cholmondeley’s errand boy?”

“He’s been worse.” 

_That_ Godfrey doesn’t doubt, but either way, that’s the end of the argument, short and unrewarding—as they usually are with Delaney, and more is left unsaid than spoken, which is not out of the ordinary, either. Delaney grunts and takes his hat, and leaves with no indication whether he’ll return that day, or the next, or next week, or ever. 

Godfrey begins to understand that Nootka is not the end for Delaney.

“If you’re so worried for the boy, Godders, then find a use for him,” are his parting words. 

***

They go over the alphabet, and then again, and read from the tattered bible that is the only book in the house, and hell knows where it even came from. Whoever called the place home before Delaney came, they didn’t think they’d need it where they went. 

“One more verse,” Godfrey says quietly, and Robert does as he’s told, reading reluctantly, never one for words when a shrug or a shake of the head will do. He’s not stupid, but he shows as little interest in this as in everything else she’s tried to teach him. Sometimes she wonders if he’s reading, or just reciting passages by rote.

“Perhaps Cholmondeley has some better books,” Miss Bow suggests from the door. 

“I don’t care for his books,” Robert says; he cares more for poisons and powder, and on the edge of the world where they live, they might be the better friends. “He talks of strange things all the time that he says he’s read in books.” 

“Ain’t that the truth,” Miss Bow snorts, and turns away. When Robert finishes the verse, he shuffles from the room, and Godfrey puts away the paper and ink. It’s dark outside, and she catches her reflection in the window, her face pale and angular, shadow circles where her eyes are, like a skull, her powdered wig drooping on one side where it’s fraying out. 

***

Pearl is sick over the garden fence when Godfrey comes back to the house with a basket of wet linens and puts them up to dry. Delaney hasn’t been around for a week, at least not to Godfrey’s knowledge. Miss Bow is in the kitchen, engrossed in a two-months-old newspaper someone brought them at some point, and Robert doesn’t answer when Godfrey calls his name. 

“He said Cholmondeley needs him for a couple of days,” Miss Bow remarks absently, not looking up. “They’re cooking up something or other.” 

Cholmondeley refused to live with the rest of them in the _master’s mansion_ , as he likes to call it, and instead set up in a ramshackle hut inland across the little brook within the first two weeks of their arrival. Robert says the place is in a better condition these days, but they all keep their distance; whenever Godfrey gets close enough to see it through the trees and thickets, the fumes and smoke emerging from the chimney or the windows, and the ever-present smell of poison turn her around. Cholmondeley rarely shows himself, and it might take them a week to find out if he were to kill himself, by accident or by design, were it not for Robert, who is the only one coming and going across the makeshift bridge across the brook, day in, day out. 

They all assume he’d say something if Cholmondeley went significantly off the rails. 

Godfrey’s hands are still stiff and red from the cold water of the brook when she picks up the piece of paper on which Robert abandoned his writing after two and a half lines of spelling errors and bad language. 

***

Coral is the name Pearl decides to give to her daughter when she is born in the middle of winter, and the girl’s newness seems impossible and fey against the reality of Nootka, the place where everything ends. Watching Pearl and the baby, Godfrey is overcome by the urge to protect them, but unlike Miss Bow and, for reasons Godfrey can only speculate about, Atticus, she never quite dares to get very close. Instead, she finds the bags of old clothes and does her best to salvage what can still be saved. Some of the clothes are older than she is, but she thinks the two pairs of breeches might fit Robert eventually, and perhaps she can fix those stays, and there is enough linen still intact to piece together something to wrap the baby in. 

Pearl is grateful for the effort, but Robert is nowhere to be found, and only returns from Cholmondeley’s place two days later, and in a foul mood. When Godfrey mentions as much to Miss Bow, she looks tired, and so Godfrey takes the bible and leaves to find the boy and remind him that he has lessons.

He fights her, first with curses, then with silence, until she gives up.

*** 

“What.” 

He barks it out from under the wraps of cotton across his nose and mouth, and the only response Godfrey’s got is coughing, something sharp and angry biting in her nose and lungs. She grabs for her shawl and presses it against her face. 

Cholmondeley glares at her from red-rimmed eyes, standing in the door of his hut, and she can see Robert inside, head wrapped in cloth too as he stirs something in a large cauldron, peeking at the door. 

“Godders?”

“Keep your eyes on the fucking flame, boy!” Cholmondeley calls back at the boy, who nods mutely, and Godfrey’s face darkens. 

“I need to speak to you,” she says, superfluously, arms crossed over her chest against the cold, and he follows her a few steps away from the door, where the air is barely clearer. He looks like a wild thing in the melting snow, angry flesh peeking out from underneath his protective wrappings, strands of long hair framing his head in tangles. He’s grown it out, she thinks, to hide his scars. From the look in his eyes, what he sees looking at her is no less grotesque. His eyes catch on her wig, but she speaks before he can. 

“I want you to stop cursing at the boy. Or in front of him.” 

Cholmondeley waits, then huffs. “That it? You came here for that?” 

“I have been trying my best,” she snaps, “to give him some basic education, and teach him to use words other than ‘fuck’, and—” 

“You say ‘fuck’ all the time yourself!” Robert protests from inside, and Godfrey pulls the door shut.

“Why?” Cholmondeley asks it with such derision, then gestures at their surroundings. “What for?” 

“Because he deserves one.” She glares right back at him, her words clipped and tight. “He’s a Delaney.” 

“Of course he is.” This amuses Cholmondeley darkly. “Just like his father, huh?” 

“Yes. What are you talking about?” 

“Nothing.” Cholmondeley’s voice is nasty. “I wouldn’t dream of keeping you from playing mother to the Delaney bastard. Would it spoil your fun very much if he was old Horace’s, in the end?” 

It’s clearly meant to hit her where it hurts, but Godfrey decides she won’t be goaded into a fight. 

“What does it matter who his father is when neither of them is here.” 

***

Pearl’s thimble is too small, and Godfrey’s fingers hurt despite the fact that she’s not pricked herself too badly yet. Her back aches from sitting hunched over her lap, and after hours of painstaking unpicking and restitching of seams, and artless darning and finishing of raw edges, her hands are sweaty and the fabric looks grubby and limp. The seams are uneven where she’s patching over the torn and frayed parts that have become less and less salvageable over all the years the stays have sat neglected. It’s been months since she unearthed them from the clothes bag, months that she’s put off fixing them, and maybe it’s too late. 

Delaney is around, and has gone to see Cholmondeley about something he wants before he leaves them again, and Godfrey, sitting out of sight behind a blackberry hedge, is glad to be away from the tension that always accompanies Delaney’s comings and goings. 

Coral starts screaming and crying inside the house, and soon after, Robert appears, aimlessly moving around in the corner of Godfrey‘s vision, tossing sticks for the dog when it comes running. He doesn’t spare her much more than a glance before busying himself with something in the shade of the trees, a little distance away from where she’s sitting. 

The late spring sun is warm on her forehead, and the wig itches, enough so that Godfrey pulls it off her head and sets it down beside her. Ruffling her hair, she remembers the boy for one self-conscious moment, but he doesn’t seem to pay her any attention, too engrossed in shapes and lines he’s drawn into the dirt. 

She only catches him looking when they walk back to the house together hours later, when the light is too low to be of much use, and Godfrey can barely feel her bleeding fingers. 

*** 

There is a small town, a fishing village, across the water, populated by leftovers from all the times someone made a claim to sovereignty of the area, a ghost town where fugitives outrun their pasts and natives come to trade in fur with ships that have run off their course. Every once in a while, someone—usually Atticus and the men in his company, Cholmondeley, Delaney if he’s there—will go there and return laden with necessities, and some frivolities, too. Pearl and Miss Bow insist they want to come along, and after six months of haranguing, Delaney lets them have their way, much to everyone’s surprise.

“Won’t you change your mind?” 

Pearl has put on her bonnet and is holding Robert by the hand, Pearl on her other arm, and Miss Bow looks at Godfrey, who shakes her head at the departing group from the front door of the house at the break of dawn. 

“No.” 

She waits until they’re out of sight, and then closes the door. 

It’s a little past noon, and the sun is beginning to peek through the clouds into the silence of the house. Godfrey is all alone. 

It takes her almost half an hour, and her shoulders ache by the time she’s secured the lacing at the back and straightens with a deep breath. The curtains billow, and her shift moves against her legs with the breeze that is coming from the open window. She allows herself to sway, adjusting to the unfamiliar feel of boning hugging her ribs. 

The reflection of the glass paning of the window is vague, and blurred, and forgiving, as though it knows Godfrey, and likes her better than the polished silver of the mirror in Miss Bow’s room. 

She watches her arms move in the glass like spectres, gracefully and delicately, and finally blinks her eyes shut when the sunlight flares blindingly. Her stockinged feet find a warm spot on the floorboards, and there she turns, and dances with the dust in the air, head tilted back, hair falling freely down to her shoulders. 

A bird chirps, and she hums a long forgotten melody, fingers dancing along the boning and cording of the stays, blindly feeling and tracing the seams she stitched, this new form of herself. Behind her eyes, her body moulds itself into its shape, the true shape of her, and in the stillness of the moment, her heart threatens to overflow. No mirror has ever shown her what she feels beneath her hands with her eyes closed. 

She keeps turning and swaying, slowly, round and round, until she loses balance and falls onto her bed, where she keeps falling, blissfully, savouring every brush of fabric, gust of air, and her own hands across her body, while the dust dances, dances, and finally settles. 

***

There are strangers on the island. 

Godfrey watches them pass by the house at dawn from the window of her room, as they go down towards the brook, axes and saws over their shoulders. She doesn’t leave the house for hours, not even for the privy.

At noon, Pearl pesters her to come along to bring them food; that was the deal, and it’s too heavy lifting just for one. 

Cholmondeley’s place smells of sawdust, parts of the roof are missing, and there is a hole where the back of the hut used to be. Walking behind Pearl, weighed down with baskets of meat and bread, Godfrey determinedly minds her step, and not the looks they throw her as she passes. They all know Pearl from town, and she responds to their cheers and whistles with brazen laughter, while Godfrey ducks her head into her shawl and looks furtively around for Robert. 

She leaves Pearl with the food and flocks of men to blend into the trees, and finds the boy sanding a plank behind the hut, out of the way. Cholmondeley is with him, and guides the movements of his hands along the wood, until he’s got the hang of it. Robert looks up at him, and Cholmondeley ruffles his hair with a smile, and then he spots her standing there. 

There’s food, she wants to say, but someone suddenly steps up to her, from right behind her, axe in hand. His hair is a grey, tufty halo about his head, the smile he bares a gapped row of yellow teeth. He looks her up and down, then squints and leans in closer to her face, and she recoils and steps aside. The man shoves a final piece of meat in his mouth, and, chewing, contemplates her for another moment, before shouldering his axe and making for the trees. He raises a hand to Cholmondeley as he goes, and grunts something to Robert that receives an eager nod. 

Godfrey wants to go home. 

“Go eat something,” Cholmondeley tells the boy when she approaches, and not far off, the man begins to cut away at a tree, thump, thump, thump. 

At night, she watches from the window as Robert walks beside the man, waving goodbye to him when they part. 

“He says his name is Charles,” Robert explains, and Godfrey scoffs. His name is certainly not Charles. 

“His teeth are very yellow,” she says diplomatically, beating the sawdust off of Robert’s shoes. She hopes to God that Charles never comes back. That none of those men ever do. 

“He knows how to build boats,” the boy continues thoughtfully. “Cholmondeley always says never to treat people as anything other, or less than they are.” 

“Well,” Godfrey concedes tiredly, “He got a new roof and bedchamber out of it.” 

*** 

Her head breaks through the surface of the water, and she breathes through the screaming cold that burns through all her bones. The brook doesn’t ever get warm, and summer has barely begun. Lungs aching, she swims a handful of strokes before touching her feet to the rocky ground and rubbing her limbs. It’s not much, but it’s more than the tub they have at the house, and she’s alone here.

From the corner of her eye, she glances the tips of her own hair, dark brown streaks heavy with water stuck to the top of her bare shoulders. Something in her chest blooms and constricts at the same time when she runs a fingertip through the strands, before tilting her head back, eyes closed against the sunbeams peeking through the foliage of trees, relishing the caress of them, and the feel of her hair, her long hair, against the skin of her back. Wrapping her arms around herself, she embraces the shudder that sparks through her.

They don’t move quietly, but by the time she hears their steps on the forest ground, it’s far too late to disappear unnoticed. Shrinking back into the water, she sees Robert, and beside him, a half-mask of angry scars beneath the wide brim of his hat, Cholmondeley, and a moment later, all of them are trapped.

“It’s Godders,” Robert says into the stillness, and it might be an accusation, observation, or a greeting. Cholmondeley grandly tips his hat, and when Godfrey remains frozen, he says, loudly,

“Turn around, Robert, we don’t stare at ladies at their bath.”

“It’s _Godders_ ,” Robert repeats, but they both face the way they’ve come, while Godfrey flees ashore, and disappears through the bushes in her chemise, her feet inside her shoes still wet. 

***

They drag the carcass all the way to the house, and deposit it in front of Godfrey with an air of expectation that makes her hackles rise. Standing in the kitchen entrance, she crosses her arms over her chest. 

“What do you think is going to happen here?” she asks, and Cholmondeley shares a look with Robert before he shrugs and points at the field-dressed stag on the ground between them.

“Pies. I want a third of it, and the bones and hide. You can keep the rest. That’s a fair deal.”

“Piss off,” she replies, but that doesn’t stop him from leaving the stag with her as he does. Robert shifts nervously from one foot to the other, head turning from looking at Cholmondeley’s retreating form to her, and back. When he looks her way again, she catches his eye and throws up her arms. “Now what?” 

It turns out that Robert knows what, though he doesn’t exactly say so. They hang the thing up and leave it for a while, which strikes Godfrey as the most reasonable thing to do while she thinks of a plan, but it’s not until Robert has the carcass skinned halfway that she really understands that he has done this before, or at least seen it done. He doesn’t flinch once, and cutting a dead stag into pieces of venison becomes a glimpse into Robert’s life before Delaney entered it that Godfrey never expected to get.

They dry some of the meat because there is so much of it, and Robert remarks that Cholmondeley probably won’t mind; they’ve eaten dried meat in town, and he knows he likes it well enough. 

“I thought you stay with Miss Bow and Pearl when you’re in town,” Godfrey replies, and Robert shakes his head and says no, he did the first two times, but they were both so busy with Coral. So now he likes to go with Cholmondeley when he trades in whatever it is he brews in his hut that people give him money for, and buys more supplies with the money he makes. He also bought Robert a pair of gloves for their work.

And what else does he buy with that money, Godfrey wonders darkly. She’s heard enough stories to understand that there’s more to be had in town than supplies, especially near the pier, where sailors come ashore in need of comfort. 

Robert needs some persuading when it comes to making the pies, but ends up helping readily enough. It’s Godfrey who gives the instructions now, reading them out of a cookbook of Miss Bow’s, who helps them for a while, but then leaves them to it to help Pearl with the baby instead. Godfrey doesn’t hold it against her—Coral is small, and Nootka is cruel—but she can’t help thinking, after everything Robert has told her, that perhaps there hasn’t been much time left for the boy since Coral came, despite Godfrey’s personal efforts. Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised he’s not around much anymore. 

Months with Cholmondeley have made Robert very good at doing as he’s told, at adapting and multiplying measurements, and it stands to reason that he should be, but it pleases her to see it anyway. She asks him about town again while they roll out the dough, and he’s not exactly talkative, but he tells her about the tavern, and the people in the marketplace, and the Spanish apothecary’s widow. 

By the time she sends him off to take Cholmondeley his share of the food, she’s come to the conclusion, at least, that Cholmondeley hasn’t taken Robert to a brothel. 

***

Robert hasn’t returned in three days. Godfrey waits until the moon is out before she makes her way across the brook, but her feet are soaked from stepping into puddles by the time she knocks on Cholmondeley’s door. 

He opens it in a cloud of smoke, then steps aside to let her in. The scarred half of his face shines under a layer of grease, and the skin looks angrier than she’s seen it in a while. She looks around the room so she doesn’t stare, and spots Robert lying curled up in front of the fireplace, fast asleep and unstirring. Sniffing, she turns back to Cholmondeley, looks at the pipe in his hands, and the dazed sheen covering his eyes. 

“Have you _drugged_ him?” 

Cholmondeley is definitely intoxicated because all he does is laugh, deep in his chest, and drop back into his chair. “It is fascinating to learn just how much a monster you think me, Godders.” When she bends over Robert’s sleeping form and brushes his hair out of his forehead, he huffs. “No, I’ve not drugged him, Christ, and I’ll have you know I wouldn’t, for this stuff comes neither cheap, nor aplenty.”

She glares at him in response, and he smiles indulgently, kicking out a stool towards her. When he holds out the pipe as well, she rises, slowly, and takes a seat. The fumes burn in her lungs, and looking at Cholmondeley from the corner of her eye, she waits for whatever is in the pipe to kick in and make him less disagreeable. 

She doesn’t really care what they are smoking, but asks where he got it from, and he tells her all about a witch who sells it out of a boat in town, and she snorts, and asks if that’s a euphemism as she hands him back the pipe. 

“No, sweetheart, if I buy a cunt, I’ll say so.” 

“Mhh yes, I suppose you would,” Godfrey’s face is beginning to buzz pleasantly, and she leans back in the chair, head tilted back, eyes closed as she exhales. 

“Thanks ever so much for the pity,” he scowls, and she scoffs. 

“If I pitied you, I’d say so, too. I couldn’t buy a rope to hang myself, people would be too busy gawping.”

“Yes, I wonder what that’s like.” 

She snatches the pipe from his hand. “It’s not the same, and you know it.” 

“I do know it. I know they wouldn’t turn you away at the whorehouse; they’d ask you right in and offer you a job.” He plucks the pipe from between her lips, and she presses her mouth into a thin line. They glare at each other. 

“Contrary to popular belief,” she presses out, through the haze in her head. “I’m not a whore, nor have I ever been one.” 

“Oh? I have,” he exhales a cloud of smoke, and his smirk looks smug, only faintly wistful. He winks at her. “I happen to be a clever and very vulgar man, you know…” 

There is no protest from her, and he fills his lungs with smoke again. 

“...and the truth is, most of London’s lady wives don’t get to indulge in the vulgar things in life often enough. And nothing makes their privates tingle like the vulgarity of paying for it.” He offers the pipe to her, smoke clouding his face. “No shame in some good filth. You don’t have to explain to me.” 

“I…” She contemplates the pipe, then shakes her head and inhales. Her head is spinning pleasantly, and there’s a clarity that comes with everything around her turning vague. “I didn’t care for the filth. At the molly house. I was just there to… to…” 

“To find true love?” 

“To be.” She cradles the pipe to her chest thoughtfully, its tip nudging at her chin. “Just to be… allowed to be somewhere.” 

Cholmondeley breathes, and she wonders if he’s fallen asleep. She takes another lungful of smoke, and he’s not asleep after all, because he leans forward to take the pipe from her again. 

“And there you were,” he concludes. “Right until Delaney came on his white horse and swept you away to… here.” He motions up, indicating, well, Nootka, she supposes. “Where you are now.” 

She swallows. “I hate him for what he’s done to us. I hate him so much.” She spits. “I _hate_ him.” 

Cholmondeley nods slowly, lips pursed. 

“I hate him too.” He pauses, then quips cheerfully, “But I don’t also desperately want him to fuck me, so I’ll let you win this one.” 

Her hand is greasy from when she slapped his face, and her tears are tears of anger, anger, not humiliation, when she drags a sleep-addled Robert away from Cholmondeley’s hut and back to Delaney’s house.

***

“And where have you been?” 

She’s seen the boy come running through the window, and opens the door just when he raises his hand to the knob. In the distance she spots Cholmondeley making his way towards the brook, and her face darkens. It’s not that she hadn’t guessed where Robert disappeared off to, but he was supposed to stay with her today and work on his spelling. 

“Town,” he says and pushes past her, breathless from running, into the kitchen, where Pearl is feeding Coral and Miss Bow is enjoying her after-dinner rum. Robert casts a look inside the pot by the fire, before pulling out a leather-bound book. “Look!” 

It’s a log book, Godfrey guesses, or something of the sort, in any case, that someone has torn a quarter of the pages out of, leaving only the blank ones. 

“To write down what I learn,” he says, and Godfrey hums grimly as she puts down dinner in front of him. She’s about to sit back down when he holds something out to her. 

“What is this?” 

It’s a bonnet; she can see that much, even in the dim light of the kitchen. It’s bent slightly out of shape, though no shabbier than anything else anyone could get in this place. 

Robert sets it on the table in front of her. 

“Cholmondeley said to give it to you.” 

She stares at it for a long moment, her lips pressed into a tight line. Casting a glance out the window at where Cholmondeley disappeared into the woods, she wants to go and smother him for using the boy to taunt her. 

“Tomorrow,” she says, “you take this right back to Cholmondeley and tell him he can stick his fucking apologies he-knows-where.” 

Miss Bow makes a sound, and Godfrey catches the gleeful arch of Pearl’s eyebrow, and sets her jaw tight. A flush of gratification warms her cheeks, though irritation continues to grind in her stomach. 

Robert eats his dinner in silence, face sullen. Pearl takes Coral away, and Miss Bow fetches more rum off the shelf. Finally, Robert gets up, not looking at her, but the bonnet.

“I thought you’d like it. We meant well.” 

Fuck. 

“Robert—” 

The door slams in his wake, and Godfrey’s words turn into a frustrated groan. The irritation in her stomach turns to shame, and then regret. She catches Miss Bow’s measuring look, and swipes the bonnet off the table. 

“Fuck.”

***

He appears out of the dimming dusk, suddenly behind her, and the axe falls from her hand, and lands on the soft ground with a dull thud. 

“Am I so frightening a sight, dear Godders?” 

She watches as he picks up the axe and contemplates the blade, before his eyes dart to her other hand. He meets her eye and Godfrey swallows. 

“James.” 

He’s barefoot, in his shirtsleeves, and his clothes are soaking wet, and only God, or the devil, knows why. He looks as hunted and mad as he always does when he disappears into the woods for two days and two nights, to howl at the moon, or commune with the dead, and whatever other spirits are haunting him. Through the vent of his shirt she can see the black lines of his tattoos across his chest. His teeth and tongue are dark, with mud, or blood, or both, and his eyes rimmed red. 

She turns back to the cedar tree that was felled by the storm two weeks ago, and has provided them with firewood ever since, and gathers up the timber. 

“What do you want?” she asks, strangely upset by how he continues to stand there and watch her. 

He steps closer, head tilted, looking into her eyes as though he’s reading her thoughts. A drop of water falls from his brow, down to his bottom lip, and Godfrey blinks. “I notice that you’ve been avoiding me.” He frowns, touching a finger just below her eye. “Why have you not been sleeping, Godders?” 

She hasn’t, though how he would know she daren’t ask. Why would he even care? 

He doesn’t have a monopoly on demons. 

His mouth twitches, and for a moment she’s afraid she’s spoken out loud, but his eyes trail past her for a moment before he meets her gaze again, a different look in them, a softer one. 

“Come on, Godders. For old times’ sake.” He puts his hands on her shoulders, and she can’t bear to look at him. His thumb presses into her shoulder seam. “Do you hate me quite so much now, my old friend?” He hums a low sound. “Is that why you carry a razor in your pocket?” 

Yes, she thinks, one hand clasping around the blade, she hates him this much now. Or she would, but instead she closes her eyes and tells him what she sees; the fog that creeps up from the sea and over the hill towards the house, and how she dreams that one day Stuart Strange will come over the top, or Pettifer, or Wilton, all the might of the East India, the wrath of the civilised world, come straight for her. That’s why she can’t sleep. 

She knows what happens to people like her when the wrath of the world finds them. 

She knows it’s not quick, nor kind. 

The razor is one of those things, at least.

“Sweet Godders,” Delaney mutters, and strokes a hand over the frizz of her wig, rests it at the back of her neck and squeezes, as though to tear her from her nightmare. His eyes are bright and wild, and they cut into hers. “Stuart Strange is dead. Pettifer is dead. Wilton. They’re all dead. I killed them all.” 

_Oh, James, James_. He sees the tear fall from her eye. 

“You have nothing to fear from them. I will protect you.”

She doesn’t tell him that in her worst nightmares, it’s he who comes over the hill.

Neither of the two outcomes of that dream is kind, either.

Delaney tilts his head back and closes his eyes at the sky, humming under his breath, half a melody, while his hands let go of her. He drags a finger down her forehead and mutters to himself, and she thinks he’s gone again, whatever place he goes to, or perhaps he’s not quite come back yet. 

“I will leave soon,” he says eventually, and his attention is caught by a branch snapping close by. He bares his teeth to her in a smile, and she turns her head and sees Cholmondeley standing among the trees, his own axe over his shoulder. 

“I have to talk to you,” Delaney greets him, and he acknowledges it with a grim nod. He approaches and swings his axe into the tree, and leaves it there. 

Godfrey packs up her pieces, and doesn’t look at either of them as she goes. She saw the look in Cholmondeley’s eyes, and doesn’t want to know for long he stood there, and how much he heard. 

***

“Ah.” Cholmondeley stops dead as he turns the corner, with a sound of surprise at finding her there. She blinks up at him, the sunlight in her eyes, trying not to show how much he startled her, and how fast her heart is beating. She rubs her finger where she pricked herself in surprise. 

“What are you doing here?” 

“Stealing blackberries.” He’s half turned away from her, and she puts down her mending and fumbles for the bonnet that sits on the bench beside her, hiding her hair—she hasn’t worn the wig in a while, but her attempts at an updo are as pitiful as the wig was, in the end. 

“I didn’t know anyone would be here,” he continues, talking into the hedge, and Godfrey doesn’t lift her gaze from her bleeding finger. 

“Just me. The others have gone to the beach.” 

He starts picking blackberries into a tin, but gives up soon. They’ve not ripened yet; another two weeks, if the weather holds. When he stops, she thinks for a moment that he’ll go, but then he doesn’t. 

Godfrey scoots over on the bench, not quite looking at him, and it’s only when he walks around her to sit to her right, forcing her to move again, that she thinks that he doesn’t want her to see his scars. She’s seen them plenty of times, of course, how could she not, but she understands that it’s different out here, where the sun is bright. 

“What’s your price for darning two pairs of socks and a shirt?” he asks conversationally, and she chuckles. 

“A proper ribbon for your sad excuse of an apology.” She takes off the bonnet and shows him the part at the back where the ribbon is held together by a couple of threads at best, and will probably tear as soon as she ties it. 

“It was a thanks for the pies, not an apology.” He huffs. “I said nothing that wasn’t true.” 

“That doesn’t mean that it was kind.” 

They sit side by side for a while, and Godfrey continues to darn her stockings, and at some point, Cholmondeley eats the handful of blackberries he’s picked. He kicks his heels into the grass, and once she is sure he’s about to get up and leave. There’s something tense and restless about him, something disgruntled and uncomfortable, and maybe he’s lonely, and she’s the best he can do right now. The proximity of him makes her antsy, and her fingers distracted, and she can feel his gaze on her clumsy stitching and wishes—

In the distance, she hears the dog barking, and wants to sigh, not quite with relief, but… 

“They’re coming back; I should—” 

Somewhere between standing up and putting away her sewing, she missteps, and stumbles. 

“Careful.” He extends his hand to steady her, and her bonnet falls into the grass. Godfrey breathes as she regains her balance, and looks down at her side. Her words get caught in her throat, stilled like the rest of the moment. 

Cholmondeley’s palm is flat against her waist, fingers spread wide, each knuckle pressed into the solid shape of her, and she can _feel_ it. He doesn’t grab, or hold; he doesn’t move at all. But invisibly, his fingers soak up the curvatures of seams and reed, and her rib under the tip of his thumb, and her pounding heart below, his palms flattening, flattening, as though his bones are trying to memorise the feel of another human being, in case he’ll never touch one again.

Out of sight behind her, his breath hitches, and she knows, in the fleeting twitch of his thumb, that in just a moment he will take his hand away. 

Before he can, she puts her hand on his and holds it there, sinks down onto his thighs, from where his other arm pulls her closer, and onto his arousal. Her back is flush against his chest, the sharp exhale of his desire hot upon her neck, and his palms mould themselves against her breaths. Under the touch, she feels her body come alive, malleable and beautiful, and hers, hers in a way that it has only ever been when she was alone. Of all this, he knows nothing, and she doesn’t need him to; this is hers, and hers alone. 

But he wants, just _wants_ , and she feels wanted.

They shudder, and gasp, and neither speaks a word; the sunlight blinds them both. Cholmondeley’s face is buried in her hair when he finally comes inside his breeches, muted and still, his fingers dug into the lace along her neck line, where her hands are cradling his over her breast. 

Godfrey walks back to the house feeling hazy and light-headed, and more solid and in the flesh than in years.

***

Pearl has a lover who is not Atticus, but a fisherman from across the sound. They meet in secret down at the beach, and sometimes he takes her out on his boat, Miss Bow tells Godfrey while the news tears up the household around them, and drives Coral into an hour-long crying fit. From Pearl herself Godfrey learns that she is tired of Nootka, and tired of Atticus, and this house, because she shouts it so loudly, it can be heard in every room. Godfrey doesn’t know what to say, and is pretty sure no words are required of her in this matter anyway, but she sees Robert slink out the back door and eventually, after a fruitless visit to Cholmondeley, who is not at home, finds the boy on her bench behind the blackberry hedge. 

“What’s that?” she asks as she sits down beside him. It’s a book, which is enough to pique her curiosity. 

“Cholmondeley gave it to me.” 

Why Cholmondeley thinks a boy Robert’s age should read _Paradise Lost_ she decides to ask him herself at the next opportunity. 

“That’s very nice of him,” she says, and then, in silent astonishment, listens to Robert as he goes on to talk about the poem, the parts he likes best about it so far, and the difficult bits he doesn’t understand, even though he’s familiar with the story. He likes this better than the bible, he says, because the pictures in his head are bigger and more beautiful, and he tells her about the angels, and the war in heaven, and hell, and the way he talks about Lucifer makes her wonder quietly whether Robert’s devil also wears Delaney’s face, like all of hers. 

“What do you think Paradise looks like?” she asks him eventually, when he’s fallen silent, and he pulls his legs up. 

“Uncomfortably close to God,” he says after a long moment, and leans against her. She puts an arm around his shoulders and hums. 

“Is that what Cholmondeley says?” she smirks, and he giggles up at her. 

“Yes.” 

***

A curl of hair has come loose from underneath her bonnet, and she tucks it back several times before giving up, bent as she ducks through the thickets, picking small red berries into the basket over her arm. There's solace to it despite the chill that has crept into the air over the past couple of days, and the woods feel alive around her in a way they don't at the height of summer. Overhead, the larger birds caw at each other, squirrels dash along branches, and somewhere out of sight, but close enough, someone is chopping wood at a steady pace. Her skirts get caught in brambles more than once, and eventually she gives up on tucking the errant lock of hair, and takes off her bonnet altogether. Out here it's a vanity more than anything. 

She only realises the thumping of the axe has stopped when she sees Cholmondeley making his way back to his hut along the footpath up ahead. There's little point in pretending not to have noticed each other, and he stops and tips his hat. 

Her focus is on the underbrush, but she feels his eyes on her as she makes her way onto even ground. When she reaches him, she asks him why he gave _Paradise Lost_ to Robert. Cholmondeley looks pensively into the woods, then up at the treetops. 

“It’s got words other than ‘fuck’ in it.” Something prickles under her skin at the way he speaks. 

They walk back in silence to his hut, and when he hitches up her skirts, her fingers are white against the wall with need. He doesn't look at her as he fucks her, he never does, and she doesn’t care, because through it all he touches her without shame, or pity, or pretence, and the way _that_ makes her feel makes her come harder than what he does with his cock, or anything she does with her hands when she remembers their encounters in the privacy of her own bed. Cholmondeley is a horny, desperate, lonely man, but he also has the moral fibre to own it, instead of trying to pin it on her and resent her for what they get out of fucking each other for lack of other options. 

And to Godfrey, getting some fucking joy out of the edge of the world is a delightful change of pace.

***

Three days after their return from the town, Cholmondeley finally comes looking for Robert, and Godfrey has no more than a tired glance to spare him where he stands in the door to her room, because the rash is making its way down the boy’s arms and back, and she has barely slept for two nights. Whenever she leaves Robert’s side, to fetch food, or water, or empty the chamberpot, she meets no-one; Pearl has sequestered herself with Coral and Miss Bow, and the few people who sometimes stay at the house keep their distance, or have perhaps left again. 

Cholmondeley presses the back of his hand to Robert’s burning skin, then pries the sponge from Godfrey’s fingers. The boy barely notices the swap at his bedside, but his pale mouth twitches, and he moans, dazed and half asleep. 

She flees the house, down to the brook, where she washes her face and hands, and the clothes Robert wore to town, and then fetches more water from the well that she boils in the kitchen for some tea, and thin soup. 

Outside her room, she almost bumps into Cholmondeley. Inside, Robert has fallen asleep, and cool air is coming in through the window. 

“Scarlet fever,” Cholmondeley says, and leaves.

She eats some of the soup and half the bread, and leaves the rest for Robert when he wakes. Careful not to disturb him, she climbs onto the bed beside him, just for a moment, because her whole body aches at the thought of the creaking chair. Propped half upright against the headboard, she looks at the sleeping boy. She had scarlet fever herself when she was three, and she survived, but he’s so little, small for his age, thinner than most from an early childhood marked by deprivation and neglect. Stroking his hair away from his brow, she shifts and bends to press a kiss to the hot skin. 

She picks up _Paradise Lost_ from the nightstand.

It is dark when she wakes, and Robert is burrowed into her arms. He stirs when she tries to move, and whines when she climbs out of the bed and lights a candle, but sits up and drinks without protest when she lifts the cup of cold tea to his lips. The soup he refuses, chewing joylessly on the bread instead as he watches her take off her shoes and dress. When she climbs back into bed in only her petticoats and underthings, he huddles back against her side. 

“Godders,” he whispers against the crook of her neck, “I’m not going to die, am I?” 

“Of course not, love.” She rocks him a couple of times, then presses another kiss to his temple. “You’re just sick. All children get sick every now and then.”

***

Someone is talking behind her, and she startles out of her bad dream and jerks around in the bed, her heart rate slowing reluctantly when she spots Cholmondeley reciting something amusing at low volume while watching Robert drink something seemingly disgusting from a tin cup. They both look at her as she deflates back into the sheets, and Cholmondeley admonishes with a brisk tut when Robert looks as though he might be abandoning his medicine. 

The boy looks better, Godfrey thinks when she sits up. He hands the emptied cup back to Cholmondeley, and then throws himself against her, arms around her waist, and smiles tiredly up at her. His skin still feels too warm to the touch, and the rash is still there, too, but he’s more awake, his eyes more alive than the last couple of days, and she hopes to god whatever vile concoction has left that smell on his breath will be worth the sacrifice. 

She washes and dresses in the solitude of Robert’s room, before going outside and eating the apples right there under the tree because she’s starving, and anxious to feel the relief that is shaking her bones. 

“What did you give him?” she asks when Cholmondeley comes walking out of the house with a bucket, heading for the well. She plucks two more apples and joins him. 

“Recipe of my mother’s.” 

“You don’t have a mother,” she replies weakly, and Cholmondeley chuckles. 

They walk back to the house, and in the shadows of the kitchen he pulls something from his pocket and presses it into her hand. She looks at the small, stoppered flask, a single gulp, or two at best. 

“What is it?” 

“Recipe of my own,” he says. “Kinder than a razor. Just as quick.”

***

“Godders! Godders!” Robert is out of breath, and she catches him when he comes running, and only just saves the first two cabbages in the row from getting trampled. 

“What is it? Has something happened?” His eyes are feverish and bright, and his cheeks flushed, and for a moment, her heart plummets. He was better, he’s been out of bed for a week and a half—“Are you alright?” 

“Godders, you have to come and _look_!” He tugs at her arms, and she rises to her feet, beating the earth from her skirts as he drags her past the pumpkins and out of the vegetable patch. “Cholmondeley, come, you have to see!” 

“Is _he_ alright?” she asks, and he whines with impatience when she insists on closing the garden gate behind her before hurrying after him down to the brook, wondering if the day has finally come when Cholmondeley has blown himself to pieces. 

Cholmondeley is as well as ever, she soon learns, discounting the fact that there is a goat eating a low hanging pair of linens off his laundry line, which he is less than pleased about. 

“Did I, or did I not tell you to mind the damned beasts while I was gone?” he greets Robert exasperatedly, all of his weight thrown into the rope with which he’s trying to get the goat away from his clothes and back into the pen that looks new, and was evidently built with less creative occupants in mind. 

“Sorry, I—” Robert hurries to his side, and between the two of them, they dissuade the animal from eating the entirety of Cholmondeley’s undergarments, while from inside the pen, a disinterested sheep looks on, unperturbed by the two kids bouncing about. 

“Are you quite finished?” Cholmondeley snaps at Godfrey, who is leaning on the garden fence, dissolving into roaring laughter. 

“No, not for a while,” she says, wiping tears from her eyes. 

“They’re not pets,” Cholmondeley admonishes later, not for the first or the last time, when they close up the last remaining gaps in the pen that a cunning goat might slip through. He punctuates the statement with a final blow to drive the nail in all the way, but Robert is barely paying attention. He is smitten with the beasts, laughing whenever one of the kids nudges at him. “I need them for the shit. The _manure_ , Robert,” Cholmondeley pronounces sternly, taking the next plank Godfrey hands him from the chopping block. 

“They give milk too, you know,” the boy points out when they behold their finished work, Cholmondeley already grumbling that the shed will need to be bigger if it’s to hold up through the winter. 

“And meat,” he counters in response to Robert, who makes a face at Godfrey. 

***

It’s warm and stuffy inside the hut, and the windows are steamed up against the icy cold, and Robert beats them at cards upward of a dozen times before he admits that Atticus taught him to play years ago, when they were heading for the Azores. Godfrey and Cholmondeley have had enough moonshine after dinner to laugh about it, but Godfrey’s not so drunk she doesn’t catch him cheating the next round, now that she’s paying attention. Robert protests when Cholmondeley demands his losses back, but doesn’t cheat again. At least not that anyone notices. 

Two hours later, the boy has begged a taste of the moonshine and is fast asleep in Cholmondeley’s bed, and Godfrey is eating her winnings, sugared lemons Delaney brought the day before. He’s taken the house to town for some feast, or celebration, but Godfrey never goes, and Cholmondeley only goes to trade, and Robert doesn’t go without Cholmondeley, so here they are. 

“How about we raise the stakes,” Cholmondeley suggests, hiccupping and pouring them each another shot. Godfrey takes the glass, but doesn’t drink, instead lifting an eyebrow. Her cheeks are flushed with laughter and spirits, and the plait at the back of her head is coming apart. 

“If I win,” Cholmondeley smirks, shuffling the cards. “I get to fuck your mouth.” 

Godfrey huffs and leans forward onto the table. “And if I win?” 

“Is this a challenge?” He wiggles his eyebrows, and they both laugh, quietly, because Robert had better stay asleep. Godfrey deals the cards, and they play. It’s not a quick game, and Godfrey quietly passes up the chance to end it, maybe because she’s drunk, maybe because she enjoys the mounting tension. 

In the end, Cholmondeley wins, and she kneels down and sucks his cock; not something she’s done in years, but it feels enjoyably vulgar, and he seems to think so too because halfway through she has to put a hand over his mouth to keep him quiet. Her fingers are inside his mouth down to the knuckles when he comes, and there are teeth marks on her skin. 

“Ah, fuck me,” he gasps. “You let me win.” 

He’s slumped back in his chair, catching his breath and laughing softly, and when she gets back to her feet, panting and wiping at her mouth, it takes no strength for him to push her backwards, flat onto the table, sending the cards flying. 

He pulls up his chair and hitches up her dress. “Would you enjoy that?” 

“Fuck.” She writhes when he slings one of her legs over his shoulder and dives under her skirts, and licks a broad, wet line across the quick of her. Her hand clamps down over her mouth as she moans inarticulate obscenities, holding him there with her thighs, squirming and needy. He giggles from somewhere underneath her shift, filthy bastard that he is, and she comes before she knows it, a wet, dripping mess. 

***

When she wakes, Robert is standing over her, wrapped in Cholmondeley's heavy quilt, and nudging at her shoulder, and she shuts her eyes against the brightness of the world, shrinking back into herself because present circumstances begin to catch up with her and the morning light has never been kind. 

" _Godders_ ," Robert insists, pulling her upright and onto her feet, and she wraps her shawl high around her shoulders and shivers as the warm lull of sleep escapes her. 

Looking past Robert, whose hands and face are pressed against the window, she sees the snow covering the woods outside. It's the first they’ve had this year, and Robert's breath is clouding up the glass. She steps up behind him, and rubs warmth into his arms and shoulders. She's about to tell him to fetch his coat so they can leave and get back to the house, but he turns and looks at her, and his eyes are so bright, she decides they can stand a moment longer. 

Cholmondeley is snoring in front of the fireplace, and he must have been awake at some point, feeding the flame that is still alive, if barely. He's fast asleep now, and doesn't wake even when Godfrey adds two more logs to the grate, only grunts absently. He smells of drink and smoke—they both do—and drool hangs from where his mouth gapes open on one side, the lines of flesh corrupted and distorted. He kissed her on the lips once, a thoughtless impulse at the height of release, and it startled them both out of the moment, foreign both in sensation and context. Whatever parts of her he kisses, she likes them better if she can’t see them, and he likes kissing them better if she doesn't look. 

She spreads the quilt over his body before following Robert out into the winter.

***

The cold air helps, she thinks, clenching her teeth at the same time to keep them from chattering. Her fingers are frozen stiff and her shoulders shaking with the cold more than anything else, at least half the time now. There’s really nothing much left in her stomach, or anywhere else in her body. 

She retches anyway, once or twice, in between wringing out and scrubbing her other shift in the freezing water of the brook. 

Footsteps in the snow behind her make her turn around, and there’s Cholmondeley, waving a familiar jar of grease at her. His breath makes clouds, and Godfrey gasps for air when her stomach convulses again. She coughs foul spit onto the ground, and only just keeps her shift from floating off. Cholmondeley watches as she scampers to sit on the remains of a fallen tree, and sits beside her. 

“Not even just a bit?” he asks with an unambiguous hand motion, and she bares her teeth, while her insides churn. He wrinkles his nose when the smell of sick wafts at him from where she vomited behind the tree just earlier. “Good Lord, are you dying?” 

“Fuck off.” 

“Well, pardon me,” Cholmondeley shoves the jar in his pocket and throws up his hands. He’s tense; she can feel his frustration radiating off of him. It’s not the first time today she’s seeing it. 

“Would it kill you,” she grinds out, annoyed, “to go to Robert and apologise?” 

“I have nothing to say sorry for.” 

“You never do, don’t you. Not until you’re actually at death’s door.” 

At this, Cholmondeley stands, with an ungentlemanly gesture at her. “Fuck you; I’ll stick with my hand for company, then.” Under his breath, he adds, “How did this ever become my fucking life…” 

“How many people do you think have ever apologised to him for anything?” Godfrey calls after his retreating form. “Just be the bigger person, for God’s sake, and let me die of dysentery in peace.” 

“You’re not dying of dysentery,” he throws back petulantly. “You had a funny oyster yesterday.” 

***

She wakes when Cholmondeley’s arm knocks into her back, and he grunts as he gets back into the too-narrow bed after taking a piss. She remembers, not for the first time, why she usually walks back to her own bed. If the night weren’t freezing and pitch dark, a new moon, she would have, but as it is, Robert is asleep on a cot in the goat shed and she is crammed in beside Cholmondeley, who is settling back in to sleep. 

Moments pass, and then he speaks, his voice close, “I guess you’re awake now.” 

“It’s alright,” she says, trying to shift her position and disentangling her shift from where it’s trapped under her. Her dress is somewhere thrown over a stool, but she’s kept on her stays, for warmth, for comfort. Turning over onto her other side, she folds her limbs into the narrow space, and, for long moments, they lie there. 

“Aren’t you going back to sleep?” 

“How do you know I’m not?” 

“You don’t sound like you are.” His fingers are groping in the darkness, and she sighs in fond exasperation as he huddles closer, deeper under the blanket. 

“I’m not now, no.” 

His fingers feel clumsily for her face, and she sputters, and then he kisses her, and instead of protesting about his almost taking her eye out, she hums because it feels unexpectedly pleasant. They part, breathe, and then it’s her who leans in. 

Godfrey can’t remember the last time she was kissed like this, just kissed, not out of courtesy, duty, or pity. Cholmondeley is kissing her, perhaps because it’s dark, or because he can’t remember either, or because it really does feel _nice_ , and right then she loves him for letting it happen to them both. They kiss, and when he tangles his fingers in her hair, and pulls, she feels the caress all the way down into her marrow.

She lets herself sink back under his weight and the press of his cock at her hip, and he winces when his scarred hand is trapped beneath the sturdy boning of her stays. When she arches to release him, he pulls at the lacing at the back, and she thinks perhaps it is by accident, but it’s not, and they peel the stays off of her, and then her chemise, and his linens too. 

“Fuck.” Cholmondeley kisses and bites her nipples and moans, “You have the softest skin,” and Godfrey is harder than ever, ever before. 

He makes a noise into their next kiss when he feels it, and she grins into the darkness. 

“Come on, George, now fuck me like you mean it.” 

Cholmondeley hums, delighted, at the profanity, or the prospect. But then he does, and does he ever.

When they come it’s not pretty, but they can’t see the mess, or anything else, and dawn is too far away, so rather than face candlelight, Godfrey falls asleep with her arms around Cholmondeley, and says she’ll wash the sheets tomorrow. 

***

Delaney comes back, and reminds them that it’s not the end yet.

***

She slams her hand against the door post, and the entire huts rattles with the force of it. Cholmondeley stops, a mere inch away from her arm barring the way. He looks ahead, his mouth a thin, tight line, and Godfrey shakes with fury, silently daring him to look her in the eye. 

"He wants a chemist," Cholmondeley grinds out, and Godfrey wants to say _so what, fuck him, to hell with him, and to hell with his plans, and his cruelty, and his dance with death_ , because that’s what she told Delaney, so why can’t he? 

Why can’t he? 

_Don’t leave_ , she wants to say, _promise you’ll come back, at least kiss me before you go, at least take a moment to fuck me one last time before you let yourself get killed for James Delaney, you bastard, and make it worth my while_.

But then, then Cholmondeley raises his eyes to meet hers. 

“You realise that if I don’t go he'll take the boy." 

The kindness in his eyes breaks her heart. Her arm falls to her side, and he brushes past her and leaves her crouched there in the doorway. 

***

Days turn over into days, and weeks, and months, and with every month that follows, the less the earth seems to turn, and the more she feels like everything is coming to a halt. The only thing that marks the passing time is how tall Robert has grown, over the course of only a few weeks, it seems. Godfrey remains the same, though it seems to her there is more grey in her hairbrush than there used to be. 

One day, she returns to the house and finds it a husk, as void of life as it was before they came to live in it. The ghosts and guests who sometimes stayed in it are gone. When nobody comes back to it for a week, she goes through the rooms and picks up all that is worth taking. Cholmondeley’s hut is big enough for two. 

The goats and sheep multiply and want a bigger pen and better shed, so they build one, and in return there’s more milk than they need, and cheese and wool enough to sell along with what the poison kitchen yields. Godfrey makes Robert a coat out of rabbits and what used to be Miss Bow’s bed curtains, and they get through the long winter, playing cards by the fire and reading all of Cholmondeley’s books. 

When spring arrives, Robert persuades her to come to town with him, to help, and he doesn’t deserve having to carry it all on his own, so she goes. People stare at her, but she minds less when she sees how they greet Robert like a welcome face. The witch that still sells pipeweed from her boat pinches his cheek, and tuts how much he looks like Cholmondeley, and Godfrey doesn’t sleep that night. She presses her face into the pillow, wrapped in Cholmondeley’s quilt, and comes the closest she’s ever let herself get to grieving.

The dog dies, at the height of summer, and the next time they’re in town, Godfrey leaves Robert to his business, and trades Miss Bow’s old mirror for two pups. They take them home, and give them names, and laugh when they piss onto the floor in their excitement. 

Life goes on. It has to, for Robert’s sake. 

Cholmondeley’s been gone for one year, to the day, when wreckage of a Spanish ship washes ashore. Godfrey is down by the shore that day, and stares out at the waves.

***

Then, one grey morning, strange ships have cast their anchors out in the sound, and everything is quiet. Godfrey is walking past the house on her way to the beach, when she sees him. 

Delaney is coming over the hill, black and stark against the November mist, ashen and grim as death. In the far distance behind him, rowing boats have been released from the anchoring ships, and are making their way to shore. 

She turns around, and runs back to the brook. 

Robert is just about to leave, the dogs about his feet. She holds the shotgun out to him. 

“Bring back a deer.” 

It’ll take him hours, and he says so, but she doesn’t budge. Whatever happens to her, she can’t bear for him to see it, and if he finds her later, it’ll be soon enough. 

He's not gone twenty minutes when she hears voices shouting all the way from the Delaney house, indistinct, but unfamiliar. Nobody ever comes here, not for months and months. They only ever come in nightmares.

But twenty minutes should be enough. The boy is fast. 

She looks at whatever it is Robert was cooking last, and casts a glance out the back window, to make sure he's really gone. Looking around the room she takes in Robert’s bed stood in a corner, the poison kitchen, the books stacked on the shelf, well out of the way of the fire. When she sits down at the table, she turns over the little flask in her hands, the gift Cholmondeley gave her once. 

A gunshot echoes somewhere outside, and birds cry out in anguish. 

When she closes her eyes, Delaney flashes before them, prowling through the mist, heading right for her. 

She unstoppers the flask, then stoppers it, over and over, waiting, listening. 

Another shot. 

The steps come, suddenly outside, and something moves beyond the window, in the corner of her eye. 

The door creaks, and the flask drops from her hand.

"Look at you." 

She can’t remember him as quite so ugly, despite his not having changed at all; only his hair was cropped some time ago. He stares at her for a long moment before taking in the room, sniffing and scowling. He’s leaner than he was, and walks with a limp he didn’t have before.

"I thought you said you were going to die," Godfrey says, blinking against the harsh light and the smell of sea and smoke and gunpowder that wafts over from where he stands, and mixes with the chemical scent she's come to associate with him. It itches at the back of her throat and makes breathing a chore.

"Still not convinced I didn't," Cholmondeley mutters, standing by the work table and scowling at the contents of the phials. Prodding at something with a spoon, he curses at the sound of bursting glass. “And what's he think he’s doing here?" 

Godfrey gets to her feet, to help, or at least to stop just sitting there, and the little flask hits the floor with a dull sound. 

Suddenly the back door bursts open, and Robert stands there, gun in one hand, two rabbits dangling from the other. He sees Cholmondeley, and Godfrey’s chest constricts at the looks on both their faces. 

"And where have you been?" Cholmondeley asks, coughing and nodding at the chemicals. Robert scowls through the joy in his eyes and shakes the rabbits in Godfrey's direction. 

"She sent me out hunting! But I thought I saw—so I came back." 

Cholmondeley's eyes dart from her face, to the flask on the floor, and then back up, and god, she feels so old and washed out, frayed and rough around the edges, and his gaze is impossible to bear. He knows, she reads it in his eyes, and she can’t meet his eyes, she can’t, she can’t remember how to be looked at by him and not shatter to pieces. 

Cholmondeley grabs Robert by the collar, and pulls him along to the mess on the table. "Are you trying to blow my bleeding hut to bits?" 

Robert protests and complains, but doesn’t try to tear away, and Cholmondeley doesn’t let go of him, and Godfrey leaves them to it. The rabbits need taking care of. 

Her hands are cold when she wipes the last of the tears from her cheeks and slowly picks her way back through the bushes. Robert comes bursting out of the hut, shotgun in hand, and she stops and wonders what he's about, when suddenly he's right in front of her and throws his arms around her as though he's still a child, and not almost her height. He says nothing, just clings tight, and she holds him, thinking that if she had any more tears to cry right now, there'd be no stopping them. 

"Where are you off to?" she asks after a while, and he gives her one last squeeze and sniffs, his voice cracking, as it has been for a while. 

"To fetch another rabbit.” 

She can see Cholmondeley through the window, slouched into a chair and motionless, hands folded in his lap. His eyes follow her as she walks in, hangs up the rabbits for later, and puts more logs on the fire.

“I’ll make some tea,” she says, lost for what else to do; she doesn’t want to go, but he’s so still, and it’s been so long, maybe she can no longer read him. 

Passing by him to fetch the kettle, she is stopped by his gloved hand upon her waist. 

When she puts her hand on his, he flinches, then wiggles free of the glove, and Godfrey looks down at what used to be his good hand and is now two and a half fingers short of a full set. 

"Dare I ask about the other one?" she asks softly, already pulling at the fingers of the left glove, and the flesh beneath is scarred and familiar, and slides around her middle, pulling her close. He tips forward in his seat and presses his face into her stomach. Through all her layers, she can feel the heat of his sobbing breath, and she cradles his head in her hands and runs her fingers through his hair. 

“What happened to your head?” 

“Lice.” 

When she wipes tears from his cheeks, he looks up at her with red, watery eyes, and she sinks onto his lap. 

"Godfrey, love, have you been crying for me?" he asks, thumbing at the ruddy mess of her cheeks. 

"Yes."

It’s all she has left to offer, plain and true, and he accepts it with a thoughtful nod, resting his lips against the row of buttons on her bodice. 

"Christ, I've missed you." And like a dam breaking, he melts into the embrace, shoulders and arms enveloping her, face pressed tight against her heart. "There's no-one else in this world like you, do you know that?" His hold on her strengthens. “Do you _know_ that?”

"Oh, George..." There are tears left, after all. As they pour down her face, he kisses them off her chest, and neck, and jaw, and cheek. He kisses them from her lips.

"If I weren't so tired..." he says, licking the last of them from the tip of her nose, and he drifts off, but his hands move down the closures of her dress and end the sentence for him. Tomorrow, is what they say, when they both wake up, he’ll run those fingers up her thighs, and through her hair, and past her lips, and across her skin, and around, and into her, and his tongue, too, and his cock, until they forget how long it’s been. They’ll do all the filthy things to each other that they’ve ever done, and somewhere, somewhere in between, they’ll say some things they won’t repeat, or admit to later, but that neither of them will forget. 

"Robert will be back soon," she muses, leaning into the caress, and smiling when he hums sleepily, cheek resting against her chest. 

"He's grown so tall, Godfrey." 


End file.
